To secure our global food supply, we need to start recycling nutrients. Holy Shit is a simulation game that educates on the potential to locally recycle nutrients from sanitary “waste” material. It compares different sanitation systems and their relation to the global phosphorus and nitrogen cycle by building infrastructures for the disposal of feces and the recovery of nutrients. The goal is to convert feces into nutrients and return them to an agricultural field.
The game serves to educate, raise awareness and promote knowledge on the subject of dry toilets and the potential of composting and recycling human feces. It is designed for everyone who goes to the toilet as well as for planners and promoters of a circular economy. Holy Shit was developed as part of the research project zirkulierBAR in the master thesis A Toilet Paper – Sustainable Sanitation Solutions for Municipalities at KISD / TH Köln by Anastasia Bondar and illustrated by Pia-Marie Stute. Thank you Marie for the great collaboration!
In order to change the public sanitation in Cologne towards a sustainable system, Holy Shit was used as a tool to convince and educate government officials, politicians as well as research institutions, funding programs and citizens about the benefits of recycling feces, in order to save water, energy and recover valuable nutrients.
In order to realize a sustainable sanitation system in Cologne, the Smart City Cologne Go program partly funded the first public dry toilet, located in Volksgarten park. The work was awarded the first prize of the Cologne Design Award in 2022.
Want to play Holy Shit? Get it here!
2022 | zirkulierBAR & TH Köln – Köln International School of Design (KISD)
Photo: Ute Vogel